Conjure Women: A Novel

This book is definitely in the running for my favorite book of the year, hell I think it IS my favorite book of the year. Definite 5/5 from me. Thank you to Netgalley for hooking me up with an ARC of this great novel, that I don't know I would have heard of otherwise. 'Conjure Women' follows Rue throughout her childhood and adulthood, seeing her mother being a healer and her own later attempts at trying to be the new healer. Of course nothing is easy and plot happens. There are a few chapters that are told from her mother's perspective, but they are few in number. The chapters do alternate with one in the past and one in the 'present' of Post-Civil War. The past sections do slowly catch up to the 'present' and the closer it gets the more you're able to see just how things got this way. Rue feels like she is losing the ability to work miracles and there is outside pressure that might make everyone lose their new homes once again. This is more literary than fantasy, and while magic does exist in this book I think it definitely swings more towards the folk magic direction than what most people think of when they think of magic. It didn't affect my rating, but I feel like I should clarify that for people looking at reviews. Our MC, Rue, is delightfully complex and she feels like a real person put into page form. Her relationships both in her childhood and adulthood feel the same. They all have ups and downs, and both feel like they could be part of a real relationship. The timeline of events also makes sense and marches at such a pace that I never found myself confused about the way things happened, besides when it was intentional for you to be a bit lost. (Mostly when it comes to reveals that happen in the second half) The book is plotted so well that the twists just keep getting revealed and you're slowly piecing together the story or what happened, and what is going to happen after. The only dull moment might be towards the beginning, but I wouldn't even count that as slow. There is enough intrigue built up right away that you want to find out more, and more secrets just keep coming and before I knew it I was totally sucked in. This was an incredible read and I just finished it today and I already want to read it all over again.

First, let me note that I am in no way an expert ‘reviewer’, and very seldom write reviews. I simply love to read and have read a range of historical fiction in my long life. I found ‘Conjure Women’ an excellent read, very interesting, and insightful. I grew up in the South listening to women with firsthand knowledge of slavery through the stories of their parents and grandparents, an oral history. It’s true that the sentence structure and syntax attributed to the slaves was at times possibly over complex, but I don’t think it took away from the story. As other reviewers noted, the story does switch back and forth among May Belle, Rue, and Varina; and Varina’s story was not as clear or fully faceted (my opinion) as the other two women. However, I truly enjoyed the storyline. The writing was rich in detail , and appears to be well-researched. I think this is an excellent first book for the young author! And, it’s well worth the time spent reading.

This is not just another slavery-oriented historical novel based on the author's family tradition. This author was born in England and lives in New Jersey She has no southern roots. Yes, she researched the period meticulously. But then she created an artificial world in which her characters could come alive and thrive despite crushing obstacles. That's what makes this book unique and interesting. It's not about the horrors of slavery. Rather it's about characters caught in a limbo-land between slavery and freedom, who don't really know what freedom means. There are two interwoven threads of story -- pre- and post- Civil War. The pre- is realistic, with dashes of possible magic and heavy foreshadowing of secrets, lies and their possible consequences. The plantation and the light dialect are not connected to any particular state. It's a generic, plausible, familiar setting for a Civil War/slavery story. The post- is an artificial world where the characters have to figure out their real identities and their real connections to one another. Through a series of lies for five years after the war, everything continues on the plantation as it had before the war. The characters feel tied to the land, but not by force of ownership and law. The plantation has no known owner and somehow (unexplained) everything continues as before. The implication is that they continue to work as they had before though now there is no owner and presumably no overseer. Somehow, they survive on the produce of the plantation without any need to sell or buy anything. Somehow, no one ever expects the plantation to pay taxes. Supernatural possibilities hum in the background but are never confirmed, This post-war world feels Kafkaesque or scifi. This novel isn't a hackneyed indictment of slavery. Rather it's an exploration of what happens to people when they are forced to live through extraordinary experiences, how they can relate to one another and how they can both shape and discover their identities. The rough edges, the questions left unanswered or answered ambiguously heighten the interest and make the characters all the more engaging and credible, and tempt the reader to read it a second or even a third time.

I read this with great anticipation, expecting an exciting new addition or perspective on the devastatingly evil heritage of slavery. What I will say is that reading this showed a lot of parallels with modern times and how black people are perceived and criminalized even when they’re innocent at the whim of a white woman or man. That said, for me, I didn’t find this to be a cohesive novel. It felt like vignettes and snippets and there were potential climaxes here and there but the style in which it was written didn’t allow for much anticipation or concern for the characters. Yet, too much was happening for this to have been a slice of life for a conjure woman (i.e. a herbalist cum juju woman) living under slavery. I feel like with a bit of reordering and refocusing on certain more interesting plot points, this could have been a much more interesting and engaging novel. The premise of this novel is that in the immediate aftermath of slavery, Rue has inherited the conjure woman trade from her late mother who was a much revered conjure woman during slavery. Unfortunately, Rue is struggling to live up to her mother’s legacy and with their small hidden settlement under threat from the KKK and the town’s residents losing faith in her abilities and mistrusting her, it’s more important than ever that she protects the secrets keeping them all safe with her strongest conjures. This is a very brutal and violently visceral book- yet unlike many other books, it’s overall emotion isn’t anger but more a pragmatic bitter acceptance, a suppressed rage, an impotent agency to keep going and keep living life even under the most painfully horrific and traumatizing circumstances. I think where this book excels is in making real and tangible the brutality of oppression and slavery, the capacity of man to be inhuman to his fellow human being, the carelessness evil of casual racism and not speaking up. There’s a point where I was questioning personally the compassion with which she wrote an aggressor but the complexity of not making relationships in that period black and white was interesting. These themes in this book are very well done by the author and felt very well researched. I just struggled with the storytelling aspect. The main character, Rue, wasn’t the most compelling and while interesting things happened around her, it didn’t feel sufficient to drive a book of this length. I did find her character to be well-developed and pretty inoffensive if a little uninteresting. I think the beginning and ending of this were the strongest parts of it but sometimes the book was a little meandering and lacking in direction for too long in the middle which is odd for a book with so many small events going on. Overall, I thought this was alright for a debut novel and I liked that the author was able to explore a variety of emotions and motivations with the characters.

This is a wonderfully written story of a former slave woman that depicts the complexity of slave women’s lives during that time period. From the very beginning of the story, I wanted to know more about Rue and her mother Miss Maybelle, the healing woman. I appreciate that the fact that although this is a fictional story, it tells the truth of slavery and the people who lived back then, and that truth relates to the people of today. I highly recommend this book.

As a first book, it is very good. The beginning gripped me and I could not put it down, but then the middle was kind of boring. The end part picked up again and the ending was good. A shame the author could not keep the momentum going throughout the entire novel.

Tbh when my Bookclub picked this book for our May read, I wasn't sure I'd get into it and make it past the first chapter. However, I was drawn in quickly by several of the main characters and absolutely loved the flow of this book! Highlight recommend!

I was less than a quarter into this book, when I decided I wasn't "getting into" the characters or even the story. I went to bed thinking I would start something new the next day. I'm so glad I didn't follow through with that silly notion. This is a complex story of emotions, life-styles of the masters and the slaves (and the jarring differences of the two), feelings of power versus feelings of powerlessness. Told through the eyes of Rue (whose life has only ever been on the plantation where she was born), the daughter of the slave quarters healing woman (conjure woman). She tells of her life as a playmate to Varina, her Master's daughter and as her mother's only helper. The story starts with Rue as an adult, confronted with a strange birth where she is the mid-wife. The time is after the end of the Civil War, where the freed slaves still live on the plantation in the shadow of the burned-out mansion. The story centers around Rue, Varina, and Rue's mother May Belle. It travels back and forth between Rue's childhood and adulthood. Superstitions and "proper" culture of that time period run rampant. The hardships suffered by these characters is, at times, heartbreaking. The author's research is evident and I highly recommend this book.

Thoroughly enjoyable story with wonderfully developed characters and compassionate soulful connections. A delightful heartfelt read story full of empathy and love

This is the best book I’ve read this year so far. It has such a captivating and poetic storyline and is at once tragic, stunning and deeply gripping.

This was a compelling novel that gave me information about slavery. I appreciated that the author had done extensive research before writing this novel. A good read.

A very beautifully written book taking you back to the deep south during the outbreak of the civil war, as told by Rue, a young slave girl living on a large plantation with her mother May Belle. This story is full of love and loss; cruel times; superstition and Magick which leave the reader enthralled

Interesting book.